


the end poem

by arcadianwriter (noxstories)



Category: DSMP - Fandom, Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Oneshot, Spoilers for Tommy's most recent lore stream !!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:56:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29948946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxstories/pseuds/arcadianwriter
Summary: Tommy dies in prison.The Universe has something to say to him before it lets him go.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 66





	the end poem

**Author's Note:**

> hi !! so i spat this out in two hours without beta-reading or proof-reading and i'm also sick, so apologies for any grammatical or spelling mistakes in here !! 
> 
> this was just inspired by my love of tommy's character and how much he's been through :') i was thinking about the end poem and HAD to write something based off it, so you got this angst !! it was a struggle to write in this sort of fancier style but i had a lot of fun :DD
> 
> WARNINGS: spoilers for dream smp up until now (march 2021), death/murder, blood, injury, explosions, manipulation mentions, suicidal thoughts at one point - please let me know if anything else should be tagged !! stay safe !!
> 
> i hope you enjoy :D

A boy falls through an endless void, his body crushed and pieced back together again by forces outside of his control. He can’t scream, can’t move - he’s bound in blackness.

**You,** something whispers to him. **You. You are alive.**

Pain strikes him. He still can’t move. This doesn’t feel like life. It doesn’t feel like death either. He is remade from his own ashes, but this isn’t rebirth: there’s nothing to be reborn from. Instead, he falls, and falls, and falls, screaming out in a million invisible voices to a million uncaring ears.

**and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees**

He remembers living in bursts of colour and light. There’s a flood of colour that feels like joy and warm sunny mornings when a brown haired boy appears in his mind’s eye - Tommy reaches out for him, watches the boy turn towards another boy with taller, curlier hair with a grin on his face and a uniform on that doesn’t look right. It’s easy to remember colours: yellow is bees and hope and laughter, while red is composed of arrows and blood and a traitor, two traitors, three, spanning different times, different places. Blue is the sky, vast, forgiving, and purple is the colour of a disk he loves and the colour of the smell of warm bread drifting through his kingdom on the summer’s breeze.

Green is pain and betrayal and fury and terror he will never be able to voice, and green is death, and green is suffering. 

**and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of the player’s eye might be a star a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma in order to be visible for a moment to the player, walking home at the far side of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again**

He is twelve and he is in love with the world. He’s been taught his love from his elder brother figure who had found him on the side of the road, from the winged man he’d spoken to only a few times, from the boy a few years older than him with a mask who loves the world so much it will destroy him. Loving is something beautiful and painful, but staring up at the stars and listening to his brother narrate the beginnings of the universe to him can only be beautiful, because for now, he’s too young to learn about pain. He drinks in every bit of information he’s given, sips his hot chocolate, and ponders existence under the vast enormity of the world.

“What do you think your purpose in life is?” The older boy asks teasingly.

He bites into a chocolate bar and grins. “To visit the stars up close with you,” he replies, because there’s no other answer, and the other’s face softens.

(It’s cold only years later. He scrambles to figure out how to make it soft and smiling again, but it’s too late by that point.)

**and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the zeros and ones, through the electricity of the world, through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a dream**

And he arrives in a strange place when he’s fifteen and feels the world sing out in joy. The grass hum under his feet when he appears, and the winds whisper, and the trees and the plants and the creatures all sing to him. He walks through a forest and it sings welcome, it sings a promise of greatness and heroism, and he looks up into the face of a smiling masked boy and thinks that his life is only just beginning. The prologue to his story finishes with a handshake from a boy in green who hasn’t taken anything from him yet, but will soon take everything in twisted vengeance.

**and the universe said I love you**

He starts a nation with his older brother and best friend and all is going to plan. Their flag is bold and beautiful. At day he plays around with his friends and at night he dreams of freedom. The green boy’s face is twisted in anger under the mask as he’s called names nobody truly knows the meaning of but sting anyway, but  _ he _ is exhilarated - exhilarated at what his older brother calls independence, at what his best friend calls a game.

**and the universe said you have played the game well**

And it is not a game. War is bloody and it is brutal and in war, there is no time to dwell on the terror. He learns to sleep lightly and flinch at the glint of sliver that could be a sword, could be nothing (the point is that he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to hurt, and doesn’t want to fight). But he fights because it’s what he’s been told is right, and he almost loses everything. 

A life in a dark cave tunnel, a life in a broad daylight duel. He floats through darkness, barely clinging on. One heart flutters on his wrist, a reminder of how much of himself he has given up for his loved ones and his country. 

_ It’s not your time to die, child, _ the universe urges him.

At the time, in the darkness, he opens his eyes and grins. It's a promise.

_ It’s never my time to die. _

**and the universe said everything you need is within you**

He trades his most precious items for the country. The man in the mask - he’s not a boy anymore, none of them are boys, they are soldiers and they are heroes and villains and at times barely human - sneers at him but accepts his offer. Both of them know their fight isn’t over, even as both sides rejoice in their respective victories. The man in the mask has become more than an enemy of war. He’s his enemy, the villain, as people whisper distrustfully, and will never be defeated until he gets his disks back.

Someone thumps him on the back, pushes a cake into his hands. It’s victory, and it’s hollow. He smiles with them like he’s supposed to, but outside of their walls he can hear a disk's song calling to him mockingly. It plays on loop all night, and when he wanders out to find it in the early morning, he finds nothing but silence and a little smile carved into a tree.

The smile follows him further than he’d like. He never quite manages to shake it.

**and the universe said you are stronger than you know**

The next chapter starts like this: a new ruler, a new era, and two brothers kicked out of the country they founded. They flee from allies and enemies and those in between, and both of them know there is no happily-ever-after waiting for them at the end. Sometimes he feels so small he can barely breathe, listening to his older brother lose himself day in and day out, and he curls up tight, pressing his fingers against his eyes to block this chapter out.

_ If this had been a book, _ he jokes weakly one day,  _ I’d skip over this chapter. _

His brother stares back at him. His dark eyes are black and lifeless.  _ Would you? _

His mirth dies on his lips.

_ This chapter sucks, _ he wants to say, but he’s frightened that his brother is now the author.

**and the universe said you are the daylight**

The next chapter ends like this: a revolution, an uprising, and a… victory.

This victory isn’t hollow: it’s larger than life, a fairytale ending to a nightmare with a pretty bow on top, and he’s giddy with delight. Everyone he loves is alive, his country is back, and he laughs until he’s dizzy after the victory. There’s a President elected, then another, then another, and he thinks his best friend might do the best job out of anyone. 

There’s talk of a festival: a proper one, one that doesn’t involve fireworks and traitors and a steep decline of trust. He beams at his best friend; from the podium, his best friend shoots him a quiet euphoric smile back.

_ Maybe this chapter isn’t so bad, _ he goes to say, but when he turns, there’s nobody there to agree with him.

There’s an explosion in the last pages of the chapter, and he  _ shrieks. _

**and the universe said you are the night**

The definition of grief remakes itself in his shape.

(He’s lost more than just a country.)

He has so very few things he loves left that he takes every loss personally, and these particular losses come so heavily that they drown him. A country is rebuilt on top of the ashes of itself, but, he thinks, this is not rebirth.

_ It is, _ someone tells him, someone grey, someone who doesn’t understand,  _ this is a new era. _

He swallows down his protests. There’s no point telling anyone anything. His lips are shut tight, his heart is shattering, his world crumbles.

(He’s lost more than just a country.)

There is a ghost standing in the place of his older brother who will never be enough. When he looks at him, he doesn’t see his brother: he sees the imitation of humanity, and he’s beginning to think he hasn’t had his brother for quite some time. Because the only brother he wants to remember is the hero who fought for his country and independence, the hero who could do no wrong and had been optimistic throughout even the darkest of hours. 

Maybe he’s been setting himself up for disaster the whole time, putting him up on a pedestal.

(He's lost more than a country, and he doesn't know when he'd lost his brother.)

He learns grief, and he learns grieving, and, as he stands silently over the ruins of his once-great country, he thinks maybe this is the last lesson his brother had been trying to teach him.

**and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you**

His world shrinks from his best friend and his disks to a small beach area he’s constrained to and, eventually, a man in a mask. And it’s ironic, he thinks, because his world has never been perfect, he’d never asked for perfect, but he isn’t quite sure how or when things had grown so bad. For the first time in his life he feels alone, completely alone, and his cries go unheard. For the first time in his life he wakes up drowning underwater and under the weight of the world he can’t handle, and he’s scared.

For the first time in his life, the universe is silent and unforgiving, no matter how much he screams at it.

He learns to stop screaming.

The man in the mask teaches him to smile instead.

Despite his teaching, neither of them are smiling when chests are found underground.

An explosion; sobs of grief; a lesson etched in. 

Which chapter is this again? Nobody seems to remember.

The boy hangs suspended in his dreams between the past and the present, and realises that he doesn’t want there to be a future.

_ (“It’s not your time to die yet,  _ the universe warns through the monster in the mask.)

(He swallows. Pulls himself back from the edge. _ “It’s never my time to die.”) _

(It feels like poison.)

**and the universe said the light you seek is within you**

He jumps.

He’s free.

He’s not falling, he’s rising.

( _ It’s not your time to die yet, _ the universe sings through the air, and he finally understands.)

**and the universe said you are not alone**

He is saved by someone who gives him a place to call home and some of his old spirit back. The man is awkward and grouchy and sarcastic, and it’s such a breath of fresh air that it knocks him off his feet sometimes. There are lessons learned - positive ones, such as what he likes for breakfast and how many dogs he can hug at once and how to trust, how to care, how to heal.

Sometimes (especially at nights) he wakes up and misses the man in the mask, but those nights are growing less frequent. And they’re preparing for destruction again, and he finds himself hurtled into the past, but this time,  _ this  _ time, he refuses to be part of it. With a heavy heart, he turns away from his ally, turns back to his old best friend who’s growing horns and dark circles under his eyes and gives him a faint, tired smile. 

Because his world is so small, and he needs to hold on to what he has.

His ally’s world shrinks a little smaller, and destroys what’s left of the place the boy had once called home until there’s nothing but the bone and blood of the world on display.

This is not rebirth, he knows, because there are no ashes to rebuild from.

The boy stares down into it from an obsidian grid that stares down mercilessly on the universe.

Tears and grit sting his eyes. He will not cry. He won’t give anyone the satisfaction of seeing him break down and cry.

His best friend takes his hand, tears shining in his own eyes.

_ You’re not alone, _ his expression says, and the boy squeezes his hand.

**and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing**

He _isn’t_ alone. On the cold sea with the bitter wind biting at exposed skin from every angle, in armour crushing him beneath its weight and meaning, in the most terrifying moments of his life, his best friend is next to him every step of the way; sometimes leading, sometimes following, mostly side by side.

It’s easier to breathe when he sees the villain in the mask if his best friend is there. A music disk sings in the air, in his heart, in his being. The music makes up his essence now; it’s why he needs them back.

But then his best friend is screaming and the villain is laughing as he slams a sword against his best friend’s armour relentlessly and he’s saying  _ he’s going to die, he’s going to die, _ and for a terrifying second, the boy thinks he’s going to lose the only person and things he has left.

And then there is a trade. (There is always a trade.)

The boy hands over the disks in the past and present. He’d hand them over again in the future if he had to.

His best friend is saved, and for a moment, maybe this is what being a hero feels like.

But heroes don’t get happy endings, and so he is taken with his best friend - his brother at this point - to an underground room where the villain reveals his intentions for the world. And the boy looks at him, truly looks at him, and a startling thought flits through his head like the wings of a hummingbird:

_ You are not the same boy I once knew. _

He doesn’t know if he’s going to win here. Doesn’t see how he can. But, he thinks, staring at the villainous shell of a boy he’d once wanted to be just like, winning is that, despite everything, it’s still him.

(The man in the mask can’t say the same.)

**and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code**

And then winning tastes like gunpowder and salty tears and camaraderie, because his last-ditch efforts pay off, and people arrive to help. He stares down the villain, the monster, the Minotaur, and Theseus takes two of his lives. Some say it’s mercy to put him in prison instead of killing him- he knows it’s the opposite. Instead of spending much longer thinking about his enemy, the boy pulls his best friend and his disks close and vows never to let them too far out of his reach. Winning is shouting a euphoric  _ suck it, green boy _ in the face of his tormentor and it’s watching panic flicker over his enemy’s face and it’s basking in the joy of surviving. But it’s more than that, too.

Winning is knowing this win is permanent.

Winning is locking his disks in his enderchest and knowing they will die with him.

Winning is sitting on a familiar bench with his best friend and hearing a proper whisper of the real brother he remembers from their halcyon days long ago, winning is focusing on building a hotel instead of fighting for disks, winning is safety and comfort and joy.

Winning is breathing in fresh air and knowing it’s going to rain and being unafraid for when it does.

(The boy breathes in and falls in love with the world again. He’s older, he’s got scars, he’s tired, but he’s still the boy who wanted to visit the stars with his brother.)

_ (“What d’you think your life’s purpose is?” _ His best friend asks him a few weeks later. The scars on his face are healing over nicely.)

(The boy can shrug now. It’s refreshing.  _ “Dunno. Just being happy and all that shit. Right?) _

_ (And all that shit _ , his best friend grins, but it’s happy, and the boy is happy too,  _ right.) _

**and the universe said I love you because you are love.**

This is the end; a bench, two music disks and two boys bound in blood and grins. The sun begins to rise, and the universe is at peace.

**And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love.**

Another chapter. The book is supposed to be finished. But there is a new chapter with an old enemy - a man without a mask now, a man deprived of a mask but no less dangerous - and his world is falling apart again.

Because the boy doesn’t like who he becomes around the man without a mask, he hasn’t for months, and it’s with terror and rage and desperation. The man without a mask smiles at him, and he grits his teeth back. And for a week he is annoying and abrasive and aggressive and then they’re fighting and there is blood on his hands and  _ more  _ blood on the hands of the man without a mask and he thinks, before the world fades out, he thinks that maybe he’d been wrong.

This is not a man without a mask. This is a mask without a man, because there is no life behind those dull green eyes, there is nothing human about his hysterical laughter anymore.

A boy dies in a prison that should never have been made. He’s not the first. A masked man died there first.

**You are the player.**

A boy tumbles through empty space and cramped void, being unmade and remade and pulled apart in a thousand different ways. He can’t scream. There are no words left in him to scream.

This is not rebirth, he knows, because rebirth is glorious, a phoenix rising from the ashes, and nothing about this process is glorious or beautiful or natural.

**Wake up.**

Life remakes itself in the form of the boy it has taken so much from, and Tommy wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> !!! 
> 
> i hope you enjoyed !! if you did, please consider leaving a kudos and/or comment - they really make my day !! 
> 
> and, if you like my character studies, feel free to check out my other fics speculum (a smp!quackity study), baby duckling (a smp!dream oneshot study) and checkmate (or thereabouts) (a smp!dream multichapter study) !! i rlly enjoy writing these and love tommy's character sm ,,, smp!tommy my beloved,,,
> 
> i hope you have an amazing day and stay safe :D


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